Since the thirteenth year of Chongzhen (1640), various natural disasters and plagues have frequently attacked the Ming Empire.
The country was hit by a disaster, and the big boss Chongzhen was very anxious to catch fire. But there is one person who is very happy.
The more people affected, the happier he became.
I don't say that you know this person, that is, Li Zicheng, the second most influential person in the late Ming Dynasty and a professional "rebel". The natural and man-made disasters of the Ming Dynasty were a perfect opportunity for him, which meant that more people joined the revolutionary ranks.
Li Zicheng was born as a pawn and did not read much, but he had many high-level readers under his command.
Li Yan Li Gongzi, a native of Qixian County, Henan, is one of them.
The frequent disasters that year inspired Li Gongzi's creative passion, and he soon wrote a popular ballad:
"Eat his mother, drink his mother, open the gate to meet the king, and when the king comes, he will not pay for it."
It is no exaggeration to say that this song is better than thousands of troops and horses, and wherever it is sung, Li Zicheng's base area will expand to wherever it is sung.
The country and mountains of Daming are becoming more and more stormy.
At this time, Hou Jin came to take advantage of the fire to rob, and the Chongzhen Emperor blocked the left and right, his heart was exhausted, and he collapsed to the point of crying in front of his courtiers.
While crying, he examined himself and took all the faults on himself.
However, crying does not solve the problem.
When a child is in trouble and cries, he will often have an adult intervene and settle things for him. But Chongzhen was the head of the empire, and when he cried, he cried, and the ministers could only express sympathy, and the emperor had to carry the matter himself.
Therefore, Comrade Chongzhen could only dry his tears and continue to clean up the mess.
However, this stall of the Ming Dynasty really could not be put on.
In the sixteenth year of Chongzhen (1643 AD), Li Zicheng swore an oath in Xi'an, preparing to march to Beijing and deliver a final blow to the Ming Dynasty.
However, when 100,000 people were in a hurry, the imperial court could not pay the military salaries.
Without money, naturally no one will be willing to fight desperately. When a soldier eats food, it is a matter of course.
In desperation, Chongzhen had to dig up potential internally and prepare to collect donations from the civil and military officials to solve the urgent need.
Reaching out for money is always less popular, even if you're the emperor. Chongzhen mobilized many times in the open and in the dark, but still achieved little success.
There was no way, he had to find his father-in-law, hoping that he would take the lead in donating money and making a sample for the civil and military officials.
The abbot gritted his teeth and donated 5,000 taels of silver.
5000 two, not a lot, right?
For ordinary officials, donating 5,000 taels of silver is indeed not less.
However, for this abbot, it was less than a dime. You must know that later the city of Beijing was destroyed, and under the threat of Li Zicheng, he handed over 700,000 taels of silver.
Although Chongzhen was dissatisfied with the performance of the old man, he was not good at saying anything. After all, he is an orthodox emperor, and he can't be like Mr. Li Zicheng, who directly comes to hard and extorts.
Driven by the abbot, the ministers have "generously donated", and this time the fundraising has received a total of 200,000 taels.
Among them, it also includes the 10,000 taels donated by the empress dowager, which is really a drop in the bucket.
Chongzhen was very sad, the country has reached this step of the field, where are the loyalists?
The eunuchs around him could not help but sigh: "If the loyal are here, why should this be so?" ”
Chongzhen was silent, not knowing what was going on in his heart.
Five days before hanging, he asked someone to secretly rebury Wei Zhongxian's remains.
The tomb was built at the Biyun Temple in Xiangshan, which was the place where Wei Zhongxian was in the middle of his life.
In March of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen (1644), Li Zicheng attacked Datong, and Beijing was in a hurry.
At this time, the Chongzhen Emperor still had two options, which could prolong the remnants of the Ming Empire.
One is to move south.
Although Li Zicheng's momentum is very large, his scope of activity is mainly in the north, and the vast area in the south has not been affected by the war, and the economic situation is not bad. On the other hand, since the Ming Dynasty Ancestor Zhu Di, Nanjing has been the capital of the empire, the institutions are complete, Chongzhen can completely move the capital to Nanjing, in order to try to make a comeback.
The second is the King of Zhaoqin.
At this time, the number of troops in the imperial court was still objective, and if they were transferred to the capital, they would be fully capable of fighting Li Zicheng to the death.
Chongzhen's first choice was, of course, to move south. However, the courtiers were resolutely opposed to the southward migration, saying that they could not do Zhao Shuo or Qin Ju in any way.
Under the pressure of public opinion, Chongzhen had to give up the idea of moving south, and what was more ironic was that after the destruction of Beijing, those "very dignified" courtiers all lined up to surrender to Li Zicheng.
If you can't move south, you'll have to die.
On the fourth day of the first month of March, the Chongzhen Emperor made Wu Sangui Pingxibo, and Fei Tan summoned him to join the Weijing Division.
He also issued an edict to Zuo Liangyu, Huang Degong, Wang Yongji and other generals, asking them to lead an army to serve the king.
However, when Li Zicheng arrived in Beijing, none of the troops appeared to rescue him.
Zuo Liangyu and the others did not move at all, but Wu Sangui actually led the army into the pass, but the three-day journey did not arrive for more than ten days.
This old slippery head, with obvious intentions to wait and see, did not pay attention to the emperor's life and death at all.
On March 17, Li Zicheng's army reached Xizhimen in Beijing.
At this time, the defenders of the city had no heart to resist.
Therefore, in the evening of the same day, the outer city of Beijing was broken.
When Li Zicheng sent the surrendered eunuchs into the city to persuade them to surrender, the request was simple, that is, chongzhen zen position.
By the way, many Ming people record that Li Zicheng's condition was that he should retire from the army and divide the world in the middle; or only cut off the northwest and even retreat to Henan; the Huailing Liukou Always Record also said that Li Zicheng hoped to disarm and enter the dynasty as a general auxiliary government.
These claims are clearly unreliable.
Li Zicheng was bent on becoming emperor. But after all, he was once a courtier of Daming, and if he could let the Chongzhen Emperor Zen take the throne to himself, he could not only justifiably absorb the Ming tu and Ming armies throughout the country, especially in the south, but also have a much better image in the history books in the future.
Unfortunately, Chongzhen refused to give Li Zicheng a Zen position.
Jiangshan Sheji passed on to him, and if he could not maintain it with all his life, it would not be in line with his character.
On the eighteenth day, Chongzhen rang the bell for the last time to summon a hundred officials to discuss the matter, and none of the officials were present.
That night, knowing that the general trend had gone, Chongzhen began to deal with the aftermath.
The so-called aftermath is actually mainly to solve the problems of relatives. He first arranged for his three sons to run away, then forced the queen and concubines to hang themselves, and finally it was the turn of the princesses.
Princess Shōhito was only six or seven years old at the time, and was stabbed to death by Chongzhen's sword. The elderly Princess Changping knew that she would die, but instead of begging for forgiveness, she knelt before Chongzhen and pulled on his clothes and wept.
Chongzhen was in great pain and sighed, "Ru Why did you give birth to my family!" Then swung his sword at the princess and cut off her left arm.
Princess Changping was lucky not to die, and woke up five days later.
Regarding this paragraph, Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng have both performed righteousness, and it is probably princess Changping who survived, becoming a world-class master and bent on avenging her father.
Of course, this is nonsense, in fact, Princess Changping was relatively short-lived, and Shunzhi died of illness in the third year of Shunzhi (1646).
After dealing with everything, Chongzhen ascended coal mountain (present-day Jingshan Mountain), left his last words, and then hanged himself and martyred the country:
"The courtiers have fallen by mistake, died, seen their ancestors without a face, crowned themselves with hair, and let the thieves divide their bodies, and do not hurt a single person."
Most of the ming emperors' reputations were not very good, or they were cruel, such as Zhu Yuanzhang, Zhu Di's father and son; or absurd, such as Zhu Houzhao and Zhu Youxiao. But the 16 emperors of the Ming Dynasty, from Zhu Yuanzhang to Zhu Youjian, there was one count, and none of them were of the same breed.
"The Son of Heaven guards the gate of the country, and the king dies in the society", which is probably the portrayal of the old Zhu family.